Chemicals & Chemistry

Let's take a poll: Are pesticides used in organic farming?

Fads come and go. And come and go again. (Repeat until comatose). So it should come as no surprise that we have another, especially one involving food, which is a superb spawning ground for fads, such as kale (1).

There are three basic facts about death: (1) We all have to die. (2) All young deaths are tragic deaths. (3) Some of us die in ways that are more interesting than others, and those deaths often make their way into case reports.

When Erin Brockovich, an environmental activist, shook down Pacific Gas & Electric for $333 million for allegedly poisoning a community with hexavalent chromium and causing cancer and all sorts of other health problems, Julia Roberts portrayed

This summer Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee have all restricted the use of the herbicide dicamba.

Sometimes my job is just too easy. This is one of those times.

When it comes to food, biotech, and health reporting, the New York Times is at least consistent: It is guaranteed to be wrong every single time.

Apricot seeds are all over the internet - marketed as cancer fighters. But the seeds contain a chemical compound that, when ingested in high quantities (and by high we mean several seeds), can cause cyanide poisoning. 

A strange but interesting paper by scientists at The University of Wisconsin, which just appeared in PNAS, examines whether two similar sunscreen chemicals, homosalate&

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can be manipulated into worrying about nothing simply because the "nothing" is portrayed as (but really isn't) scary, while at the same time pay no attention to a "something" because it is po